"We asked men how they learned about sexual consent. Their answers were predictably disturbing"

Over the past few years, sexual assault has gone from something in an after-school special to a very real problem plaguing college students across the country. While it’s a widely accepted truth that parents and teachers must do a better job teaching young people, and in particular young men, about sexual consent, every time an assault happens, we are reminded of how badly these young men need coaching on what to do when the lines may be blurred.

Never has the need for this coaching become more apparent than two weeks ago, when the news of former Stanford athlete Brock Turner’s crime, in which he assaulted an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, sickened the nation. In her powerful statement, Turner’s victim reveals that “the night after it happened, he said he thought I liked it because I rubbed his back. … Never mentioned me voicing consent, never mentioned us even speaking, a back rub.”

Is it possible Turner had never explicitly been taught the importance of getting a clear “yes” from a partner? Or did he learn but chose to ignore it? The victim’s account got me thinking: How many men in this country know better, and how many just don’t know at all?

With Turner’s case as the catalyst, I set out to capture a snapshot of the way men were taught about the concept of consent, and when they learned it. Through Twitter, Facebook, and email, I was able to connect with 48 guys, aged 18 to 49, in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. about when or if they formally learned about consent—and the numbers paint a grim picture of the state of sex education. Of the 48 surveyed, more than three quarters said that before college, they hadn’t even heard the word “consent” or been given an explicit explanation of how you must ask for a partner’s permission. And of the remaining 11 who said they were taught about consent, most reported learning from parents or siblings.

Paula Madrigal was not surprised by my findings. She’s the assistant director of a sex education program at Buffalo State University in New York, and each year she meets young men and women embarking on their adult lives. In a 2015 episode of the podcast This American Life called “Birds & Bees,” you can hear Madrigal begin a conversation with her students about the concept of consent.

“It doesn’t sound right, it’s like you’re messing up the mood if you ask [for consent],” one student comments on the podcast. But Madrigal says that she has far bigger concerns than teens worrying about the mood.

“From what we have seen, it doesn’t appear as though they are familiar with what the basic premise of what consent even means,” Madrigal told me in a phone conversation. And by the time they reach her workshops in their late teens, many students—particularly the male students—aren’t able to see why this lesson is so profound.

Madrigal recognizes an education gap between the sexes about consent. But even more pronounced, she said, is the perception gap. “Statistically, men are typically the perpetrators [of sexual assault], and women are statistically the victims. So it’s almost natural that once you start talking about this, men are going to get defensive…It’s not so much from an educational standpoint, it’s that they start to personalize things. They’re not necessarily looking at the larger picture.”

A culture of male entitlement

For many of the men I spoke with, the void created by the absence of formal education on consent and how to treat a partner was filled in by their peers—and the result was rampant misinformation, and a culture of dangerous male entitlement.

Richard, 33, who grew up in the Bay Area, says he could remember when he started attending house parties in 8th grade, where drugs, alcohol and unsupervised spaces were readily available. This was the period of time when boys like him were becoming men, their sexuality awakening, and their views toward women were being molded—in other words, the time when a conversation about consent would have been crucial. ...